Balancing egos and the budget

WASHINGTON, May 3: President Bill Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress have announced that they have reached a landmark agreement on ...

WASHINGTON, May 3: President Bill Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress have announced that they have reached a landmark agreement on a plan to balance the United States Federal Budget by 2002.

The deal, reached after weeks of intense negotiation and years of stalemate in Washington over how to eliminate the deficit, entails cuts in a broad swathe of government programmes while offering tax cuts to benefit families and investors. If the plan is passed by Congress, where it has opponents in both parties, and the economy grows as forecast, 2002 would mark the first time the government’s accounts were in balance since 1969, when president Richard Nixon was in office.

If enacted, it would also mark a stunning breakthrough on an issue that has snarled US politics for years and one that would enable both Clinton and the Republican-held Congress to claim victory over one of the US’s most intractable problems. “We have reached agreement in broad but fairly specific terms… with Republican leaders today that would balance the Budget by 2002,” Clinton announced yesterday during a trip to Baltimore, where he met Senators in his Democratic party. “I wanted a balanced budget with balanced values,” he said. “I believe we have that today.” Later, in Washington, Senate majority leader Trent Lott, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders staged an announcement of their own in the Capitol rotunda.“Through this budget we will reach balance by cutting spending, not by raising taxes,” Lott told an audience.